Brooklyn Community Board 8 has received the following notice from Con Edison:

Con Edison will be installing new electric service on Dean Street between Carlton Avenue and Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn. Con Edison will have a Full Roadway Closure for this street segment for us to complete this work. We will be starting this work on Tuesday, 6/23/15 instead of Monday, 06/22/2015 and will continue until Friday, 06/26/2015. The hours of the Full Roadway Closure will be 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM each day. Con Edison will be posting signs as per NYCDOT requirements and will adhere to all stipulations imposed by the NYCDOT.

The Con Edison contact person will be Ronald Robins at (917) 709-6280 throughout the duration of the intended work in association with the Full Roadway Closure.

ESD has published a schedule for Pacific Park Community Update meetings for the remainder of the year. The dates are:

May 12

June 24 (tentative)

August 19

October 14

December 9

All meetings will take place at 6:00PM at the Shirley Chisholm State Office Building, 55 Hanson Place, in the first floor conference room.

Community Update meeetings provide an opportunity for representatives of Greenland Forest City Partners to present plans for upcoming activities at the Atlantic Yards site, and for community members to ask questions and voice concerns.

Today, Greenland Forest City Partners announced changes to the street network around block 1129, bounded by Carlton Avenue, Dean Street, Vanderbilt Avenue and Pacific Street. The changes relate to the installation of a construction fence in preparation for construction of buildings at 535 Carlton Avenue and 550 Vanderbilt Avenue.

In the spring of 2012, the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council, a sponsor of Atlantic Yards Watch, commissioned a review of Atlantic Yards’ compliance with its stated environmental commitments, which was conducted by Sandstone Environmental Associates of Metuchen, NJ. In addition to reviewing hundreds of incident reports submitted to AYW by community members during arena construction, Sandstone analyzed internal reports produced by Empire State Development Corporation’s (ESDC) environmental monitor, Henningson, Durham & Richardson Architecture and Engineering, P.C. (HDR). Sandstone’s final report documented significant issues of noncompliance with Atlantic Yards’ environmental commitments on the part of Forest City Ratner Companies and its contractors during arena construction, and made recommendations for improvements to be introduced in future phases of construction.

The Sandstone report received little acknowledgement by ESDC when it was published in July 2012. However, the report’s findings and recommendations were incorporated into the BrooklynSpeaks coalition’s response to the Draft Scope of Work for the Atlantic Yards Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) in March 2013, and were also referenced in the group’s comments on the Draft SEIS (DSEIS) submitted in May 2014.

A review of the Final SEIS (FSEIS), released in June 2014, shows that ESDC and FCRC have adopted modifications of the Atlantic Yards construction mitigation and monitoring programs for future construction at the site. Although some of the changes appeared in the DSEIS, significant additions were made between the DSEIS and the FSEIS. Here is an outline of changes to the project’s monitoring protocols that parallel recommendations made by Sandstone and comments from community organizations.

On Tuesday September 9, 2014, Barclays Center will host Fashion Rocks, a major New York Fashion Week event at Barclays Center.

The producers have been granted a permit for a red carpet to be located on Dean Street between Flatbush and 6th Avenue. The 78th Precinct has announced the following street closures for the day of the event.

All closures apply to vehicle traffic only. Pedestrians will have access but will not be allowed on the arena sidewalk. Residents and those drivers with garage access will be allowed on to Pacific Street. Arena management has characterized the event as "significantly smaller in scale than the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards."

Neighbors with questions may contact Terence Kelly with questions by email to tkelly@brooklynse.com, or by phone at (347) 834-3957.

On August 25, the MTV Video Music Awards and its red carpet landed with a wallop in the neighborhood around Barclays Center. The video to the right shows some of the volume and scale of the red carpet event, which was staged next to homes at the Dean Street and 6th Avenue intersection. At the end of the video, Miley Cyrus steps from her limo, giving a preview of her later performance on stage. The crowds lining the street are comprised largely of young people brought in by MTV, not residents from the block.

While other events have spilled out of the arena onto public sidewalks and streets, the VMAs were the first to receive permission from the City to close streets and sidewalks in the neighborhoods nearby. The entire setting - from its crowds to the facades of the townhouses nearby - were carefully stage-managed for the camera and attending media. The experience for local residents went far beyond the red carpet walk seen on t.v. It included: five consecutive nights of after hours outdoors construction work, filming footage prior to the event, live performances with amplified sound, a projection screen with lights, six back-up generators, and a shipped-in cast apparently numbering between one and two thousand people.

The 2013 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) will take place on Sunday, August 25th at Barclays Center. Below is a timetable for street closures, construction work, amplified sound and pedestrian access. The list is based on information provided by the 78th Precinct Community Council and the 78th Precinct. It has been updated to include detail about amplified sound and viewer pens.

6th Avenue from Dean Street to Flatbush will also be closed to traffic partially or in total starting at noon Friday. Some of the time amplified sound is scheduled will be used for intermittent sound checks.

Access inside the restricted area for residents will be allowed with ID. Guests of residents can gain access by being met at a checkpoint by their host or by being escorted to their destination by security.

On Thursday, June 13, the Empire State Development Corporation will host a presentation by Forest City Ratner Companies and Sam Schwartz Engineering entitled, "Effectiveness of the Barclays Center Transportation Demand Management Plan." The meeting will be held at The Brooklyn Hospital Center's Third Floor Auditorium, located at 121 Dekalb Avenue, from 6:00PM to 8:00PM. Representatives from FCRC and SSE will answer questions from the audience. Here are some open issues we hope to hear discussed.

A new survey of illegal parking and idling in the vicinity of Barclays Center during the first Nets/Bulls play-off game uncovered some changes to black limo behavior from the last survey. Overall the survey, which covered a smaller geographic area than the last, demonstrated illegal parking and idling conditions continue.

The survey is easy to execute by the volunteers because the locations for illegal parking are so predictable. There were very few unuccuppied hydrants in the area during the survey.

Notably not a single black limo was parked in the official location designated by the Department of Transportation for TLC parking on the south side of Atlantic Avenue from 6th Avenue to Carlton Avenue. A NYPD tow truck was stationed there to clear it of private cars, but it had little motivation to work.

Update: The trees in the article below have been cut and no date for their replacement has been provided the community.

Once heralded as a "Garden of Eden" in Brooklyn by New York Times critic Herbert Muschamp, Atlantic Yards is becoming meaningfully less green step by step.

In what is a big loss for nearby residents, next week Forest City Ratner will remove 20 street trees on the northside of Pacific Street between 6th and Carlton to facilitate construction in the area. The photo to the right was taken this summer. No date has been provided for when they will be restored.

Forest City Ratner received a permit from the Parks Department in 2008 to remove 86 existing street trees in the public way inside the project footprint including the 20 trees on Pacific Street. A Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods FOIL at the time brought both the permit and a debate over restitution between the Parks Department and Forest City Ratner to light. FCRC initially asked for the financial restitution they were required to pay to be waived in lieu of the greater number of trees they said they were to plant with the project. In the end the Parks Department reduced the cost of restitution by the value of 116 street trees they were told would be planted on the project perimeter.

While the Parks Department has confirmed it recently updated this permit, it is not currently known to what extent it has been modified to take into account the changes to the project construction timetable, construction sequence, and phasing of property ownership made in 2009. The area where the trees on Pacific Street are located was originally anticipated to be the first area of the second phase of the project to be constructed. However, in October 2012, FCRC Executive Vice President MaryAnne Gilmartin told investors that second phase construction would begin first on block 1129 (between Vanderbilt and Carlton Avenues, and Dean and Pacific Streets). Further, at the time the 2008 permit was granted, it was assumed the air rights over the railyard would already be owned by FCRC. Now MTA still retains those rights and FCRC is not obligated to purchase them.

This means FCRC has been given permission to cut street trees lining MTA property they do not control, and because the construction timetable for this area is indeterminate, they may leave a now green area destitute of trees for a long time. With the information currently available, the neighborhood character of the northside of Pacific Street is likely to join nearby 6th Avenue as victim of construction delay-induced blight at Atlantic Yards.